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Ok, first, I don't usually do this kind of thing. Normally when I need tips and advice I ask other people. So apologies if I screw this up. I'm not even sure if my starting premise is sound so again, sorry if this is a balls up.

Here goes - There is a discount on Captain Skill respeccing and retraining at the moment and I have a few captains I want to take advantage of this on.

As you all probably know, there are some changes coming to the game soonTM that make spending ANYTHING on respeccing risky at the moment, but I'll take a risk on one or two captains, ESPECIALLY my 18 point German captain.

I did have him as my battleship captain but for reasons (BAD reasons) I respecced him to a DD captain (sure, T-61 is fun but IMO the ships this post concerns are MORE fun).

So, my premise is this - can I respect and retrain my 18 point captain to be useful on Graf Spee, Scharnhorst, Tirptiz, Bismarck, Fr. D. Grosse and Gr. Kurfurst?

I looked at the wiki and first added up all the stars given to each skill for each ship in question.

I then averaged that number.

Then I remade the captain skill matrix in its familiar format.

Does this give me a reasonable chance at choosing skills for a captain who will be effective across all those ships?

I will certainly keep Bismarck and so can maybe discount T9 and T10 and make a new Captain for them/it (depending on if I keep T9 - I'm only up to Bismarck so far on German BB line).

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Adrenaline Rush gives a bonus of, at base, 0.2% for every 1% of health lost...

So, for example, if you are in a BB with a 30 second reload and have lost 50% of your health, you reduce your reload time by 10%. Which in this case is 3 seconds.

So that's nice, it means at 90% health lost, you reload drops to 24.6 seconds. Which is not bad at all.

However, it REALLY pays off on German BB's, Secondary focused BB's and Torpedo boats. This is because it applies to all armaments.

A Shimakaze has a base torpedo reload of 130 seconds. When you are at 10% health, because you took a trio of rounds from a Monarch, or were ambushed by a gunboat and got away.....

Your torp reload is now 106 seconds.....which really pays off.

In short, the longer the reload, the more AR pays off. However, the raw damage output is only fractional. What is important, is you can throw off peoples rhythm. In long range gun battles, you fall into a rhythm of shooting and turning to angle. Suddenly, you are shooting when they arent turning to present their guns and you do more damage. So, calculating it is much harder.

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So, my premise is this - can I respect and retrain my 18 point captain to be useful on Graf Spee, Scharnhorst, Tirptiz, Bismarck, Fr. D. Grosse and Gr. Kurfurst?

If you want your captain to be useful on ALL of those ships, then your best bet would be to just go for the bog standard concealment/survivability build.

1st row skills - PT

2nd row - AR

3rd row - SI, BoS

4th row CE, FP

Now if you want to go for a Secondary build instead, then this is where things get a lot more complicated. First off, Graf Spee isn't suited for a Secondary build, though it can be useful to fend off DDs at close range since Graf Spee is rather weak against them. But it is a tier 6 which means Manual Secondaries only give a 15% accuracy buff which is not worth it. Plus as a cruiser which specialises in ambushing broadsiding cruisers, you would want to pick up CE, so that's 4 points to take into consideration.

Secondly another dilemma is whether you want to take IFHE for your Secondaries. All of those ships except the GK have 105mm guns as a big portion of their Secondary power. The problem is these guns only have 17mm of penetration, which means their HE shells will shatter on any BB superstructure or any Tier 8+ DD hulls. You can choose to forego IFHE, but don't expect 105s to be anything more than firestarters. On the other hand, IFHE is not that useful on the GK. Iirc all it does is allow the 128mm Secondaries to pen the bows and sterns of some BBs - not worth 4 points imo.

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If you are gonna move around the 18 captain, then universal, always in use skills like AR, Priority target, superintendant are good. concealment experts are nice in Graf Spee, Bismarck/Tirpitz ( GS a cruiser; TIrpitz n Bismarck can have quite good concealment in tier 10 matches), though for GK I think CE is kinda... not that useful. Not much idea about FDG as she is still one of the worst ships I have ever ground

If you are a person who is looking for Secondaries fun, then IFHE will be useful in GK, and future FDG (after they buff her 105mm secondaries penetration), but to be frank, it's very situational. at times you will feel frustrated as there are no chance at all to push/ the map layout not suitable for you to close into opponents, on the other hand there are a few occasions your secondaries laugh at bow in yamato/Montana, not to mention those with 32mm armour BBs.

I think one of the CC mentioned before: the situational skills aren't worth it ( at least I think he meant to be competitive).

AR: yeah it sounds weird for a damaged ship to have faster reload, but maybe we think it as the morale of the crew increased (damaged ship, revenge!!), thus work faster? XD

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BFT is a no-no unless you wanna go full full AA. AFT is also only good for AA build. IFHE is largely useless on German BBs.

Secondary build is only good when the situation favors it, usually in late match when there are only very few ships around, or in Cyclone with adequate assistance. Which are rare situations. Not that I don't recommend a secondary build, just not worth the risk.

Survivability is better than secondary. AR, SI, FP, CE are necessary. Vigilance if you want, not mandatory. I'd recommend anything else that help consumables and DCP (I forgot the names of the skills).

I'm finding an aggressively (but not stupidly) played Graf Spee can be tanky and fun - and yes as T6 Manual Sec is less effective and she is only a cruiser but she has good secondaries for a cruiser... and is fun.

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People say IFHE is useless for KM BB's. The reason is their Secondaries use AP rounds.....

This used to be true. They are being switched to all HE rounds, and as such, increasing the damage of the HE is a big thing, because of how the secondaries work.

"Raised his hand from the back seat" I'm sorry sir, but I remembered German BBs, especially the mid to high tiers, have HE secondaries since their introduction, thus making them one of the line viable for secondary build.